Airfare pricing is incredibly complex, and even for experts it’s tough to know for sure whether the cost of a given flight will go up or down. Tiffany wrote a post a while ago about the best way to track airfare trends, but even that isn’t a sure bet for scoring the lowest airfare. Over the years I’ve started to just take the approach of booking airfare when it’s a fare I’m comfortable with — more often than not waiting seems to backfire.
Back in the day I remember that when the cost of a United flight decreased after ticketing, they’d issue you a voucher for the fare difference. However, they discontinued that policy many years ago.
There are still a few airlines that don’t charge change fees on tickets, which is basically the equivalent of offering a refund when the fare drops. For example, Southwest doesn’t have any change fees for all passengers. Furthermore, Alaska Mileage Plan MVP Gold members and JetBlue TrueBlue Mosaic members don’t pay any change fees on tickets (both revenue and award), so you can always lock in a ticket and then if the fare drops you can cancel (the ticket cost goes into your travel bank) and then rebook.
However, I just recently learned about another airline that will issue a refund to anyone when the fare drops.
Deals We Like shares that JetBlue will issue you a voucher if airfare drops within 14 days of when you book. In order to do this:
- This needs to be requested by phone, and not online
- This is only valid when the airfare has dropped in a way that doesn’t require the use of any promo codes; it has to be a publicly available fare (it’s fine if there’s a promotion, but that promotion just can’t require any promo codes)
- The “refund” will come in the form of a credit to your travel bank, which you can use for another JetBlue flight within 12 months
I wasn’t aware that JetBlue had this policy, so figured it was worth passing on. While it’s probably not worth checking airfare every day after booking to see if the price drops, I could see myself checking twice in hopes of ticket prices having gone down (maybe after a week, and then again just under a week later).
Has anyone requested a travel credit when a JetBlue fare dropped within 14 days?
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